the darkness; on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood still,
facing the illuminated parlour window at her back, turning his head from
side to side, laughing softly to himself.

"Just fancy, for a minute, the old man's beard stuck on to my chin. Hey?
Now say. I was the very spit of him from a boy."

"It's true," she murmured to herself.

"And that's about as far as it goes. He was always one of your domestic
characters. Why, I remember how he used to go about looking very sick
for three days before he had to leave home on one of his trips to South
Shields for coal. He had a standing charter from the gas-works. You
would think he was off on a whaling cruise--three years and a tail. Ha,
ha! Not a bit of it. Ten days on the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas
was a smart craft. Fine name, wasn't it? Mother's uncle owned her. . . ."

He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice, "Did he ever tell you
what mother died of?" he asked.

"Yes," said Miss Bessie, bitterly; "from impatience."

He made no sound for a while; then brusquely: "They were so afraid I
would turn out badly that they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me
for being idle, and the old man said he would cut my soul out of my
body rather than let me go to sea. Well, it looked as if he would do it
too--so I went. It looks to me sometimes as if I had been born to them
by a mistake--in that other hutch of a house."

"Where ought you to have been born by rights?" Bessie Carvil interrupted